


Always

by JamieBeGood



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Dungeons & Dragons Online
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Light Angst, Started out cute, ended angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:01:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12024786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamieBeGood/pseuds/JamieBeGood
Summary: Days before her birthday, days before it's all ruined.





	Always

Cass was blind drunk and just trying to make a sandwich, that's all. Her hands weren't properly grasping the jar of mustard and the clay jar shattered on the floor, condiment spattering all over her shoes.  
“Fuck!” she hissed, looking around in the dim for a towel.  
“Who’s there?”   
Someone had cracked open the door to the cooks rooms. They were too tall to be the cook, it had to be her son. Cass put a finger to her lips and tried to shush them in a desperate attempt to not be caught.  
“Shhhhh! I'm not really here!”   
“Miss Cassandra?”  
It was in fact, Jeffrey. He was tying a dressing gown around his middle and shouldering the door open. She smiled at him as she stumbled around the broken crockery, waving to him to go back to bed.  
“Hey Jeff! Everything’s fine!”   
“Are you alright? What happened?” he asked quietly, closing the door behind him.  
“Tob took me out for an early birthday celebration, bought my drinks all night. Did I wake you up?” She flopped to the floor and began picking up the pieces of crockery, dropping them into one hand.  
“No, I was-”  
“Reading?” She grinned at the floor, already sure of the answer. He laughed and pulled a waste bin out for her to drop the shards into.  
“Yes, Miss. I was reading,” he nodded.   
“Jeff, you know I hate it when you call me that,” she scolded gently, frowning while she dumped the contents of her palm into the out stretched bin.  
“Years of habit, Cassandra,” he felt a flush creep up his neck, calling her by her given name had been at her insistence when they were children.  
“Years of my mother, you mean.”  
“Your words, not mine.”   
Iantha held fast to social rules and hadn't approved at all of their friendship- innocent as it was.  
Cassandra always found him in the library, reading. Tobias would have held it over his head as blackmail whereas she pulled down a book and joined him at the table. Every once and awhile, she'd pull schoolbooks out of her desk and ask for his help. Never once did she give away his hiding place, they were caught out by accident when they were sixteen.  
Iantha came looking for Cass and found the two of them- her at the desk, reading a treatise aloud in Celestial while he sat at the table and listened patiently. He couldn't understand a word she said, but she needed the practice. The lady of the house stood there and observed them for a few moments- entering through a side door had it's advantages at times- not liking what she saw.  
Her daughter leaned against the back of the chair, holding the papers out in front of her with one hand and gesturing wildly with the other. This boy, the cook's son, was sitting at the long table and leaning on his elbows as she read aloud. The distance was polite, the glances were not. Any time one's gaze was diverted, the obvious infatuation showed in the way they stared and quickly tried to hide it when the other looked back.  
“Cassandra!”   
The two of them shot to their feet, nearly knocking over their chairs, when she made her presence known. Jeffrey bowed immediately, keeping his head down.  
“You're almost late for dinner and here I find you torturing one of the servant’s children?” She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at her daughter, they both flushed pink but for different reasons. Cassandra’s gaze never wavered from her mother's, spine straight as she sensed the challenge.  
“Apologies, mother. I needed an audience for this dratted language assignment and I saw Jeffery first. His misfortune, I suppose,” she shrugged.  
“I see. And Jeffery, do you speak Celestial?” Iantha turned to the servant boy, waiting for an answer.  
“No, milady. The young Miss was kind enough to give me a copy of the Common translation so I wouldn't be totally lost,” he replied, eyes still on the floor.  
“Cassandra always has been the thoughtful one. Well, go prepare for dinner, my dear,” Ioanthe nodded, mouth pressed into a hard line. Jeffery felt a cold shiver down his spine as Cassandra left out the door her mother had entered, mouthing an apology behind the older woman's back. He stood still, waiting for the axe to drop. She strode forward and tilted his head up, examining his face as she held him by the jaw.  
She and her daughter looked eerily alike. Same eyes (green, glowing, full of expression), same hair (black, long, curled and fashionably styled), and almost the same face (her father had given her just enough softness, Cassandra could be sculpted from marble instead of carved from ice like her mother). Looking Iantha in the eye made him more than nervous.  
“You're a lovely thing, to be sure. I can understand the fascination, with both of you. But it cannot go past this, do you understand?” she said as she turned his head from side to side. His tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth as he tried to speak. “A nod will suffice. Hopefully you're not at stupid as some of the servant girls Tobias has chased into unemployment.” The threat was obvious- his mother would suffer if he didn't wise up and quickly. He nodded and she released his face, dismissing him with a gesture.  
She sought him out a few days later, bringing a book from the library as a peace offering. He knew there would be no point trying to argue with Cass, and if he told her what her mother had said it would just make it worse. He just had to keep her at arm's length and not go to the library during the day.

Now she was sitting with her knee in mustard, a few days before her eighteenth birthday and unable to stop giggling.  
“How much did you drink?” he asked, putting the bin away and picking up a couple of rags. She shrugged and held her yellow stained palm out to take a rag from him.  
“Tob just said it was almost my birthday so we should celebrate. Pity you weren't there, we had fun.”  
“Define fun?”  
“Tob dressed me up in his clothes so no one knew it was me and I won card games for him since he's total shit at bluffing,” she answered cheerfully, wiping her knee and then the floor. He shook his head as he wiped down the door.  
“Between you and your brother, I'm surprised the pub wasn't burned to the ground. You two together are trouble,” he sighed.   
“I resent that, Jeffery Milliardo!” she protested, hauling herself up and over to the sink. He watched carefully as she took a glass down from a cabinet and pumped water up from the well. She had sobered up enough to make it up the stairs on her own at least. He didn't want to be caught with her inebriated and in her brother's clothes, least of all by her mother.  
“I'll rephrase, you are trouble in and of its very self Miss Cassandra Legendre,” he snarked back, taking some joy in the offense she couldn't hide. She gulped down the glass of water and gave it a quick rinse before putting it back in the cabinet.  
“Can't call me that for much longer,” she replied, leaning against the counter.  
“No, soon you’ll be Lady Cassandra.”  
“Mother will be so thrilled,” she dead panned. He snorted and came over to drop his own rag off in a pile next to hers. She tipped over, resting her head on his shoulder- the sudden intimacy surprising him. He couldn't recall the last time they had even shook hands. Impropriety and all.  
“Ah, sleepy?”   
“Very.”  
“Think you'll make it upstairs?”  
“Eventually.”  
“Plans for your birthday?” He was trying to keep her awake and had run out of smart ideas very suddenly.  
“Oh that’s funny. Very witty,” she drawled from her semi conscious state. She lifted her head and pushed herself up onto the counter, a little closer to eye level with him now.  
“It's late, I'm not at my best.”  
“You could try asking what I'd like for my birthday.”  
“Very well, what would you like for your birthday?”  
“A good bow for my viol, mother to get off my case, and for you to kiss me stupid,” she ticked the requests off on her fingers, letting the last one hang in the air between them for at least a minute before hopping off the counter and making her way to the door. 

He nearly went after her. Nearly gave her what she asked for. But he couldn't make himself do it. He told himself it was because she was drunk, because it was late, because a million other things. He couldn't admit to himself just then it was because he was afraid.

Not that either of them would remember anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CUTE AND THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO MAKE OUT BUT NARRATIVE!


End file.
